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Baker saw Georgia Southern in a different light

Georgia Southern’s football program was started on passion. A small group began with a vision, did the impossible by hiring Erk Russell as coach and restarted a program that had been dormant since World War II.

A few years after restarting, the Eagles were at the top of the second highest tier in Division I football, had a nice 18,000-seat stadium and boasted a Cinderella sports story told nationally.

Twenty-five years later, GSU remains in the same spot – minus the Cinderella story.

Now another faction wants to see the Eagles take a step, they believe, is long overdue.

They’re acting with the same passion Georgia Southern football was founded on.

For 17 years, Sam Baker has been keeping Eagles' athletics budgets out of the red. He knows the finances of a move to a higher level and doesn’t mind seeing GSU’s football program swimming as a big fish in a small pond.

Some might view Baker’s vision as stagnant as an investor with a portfolio filled with one-percent CDs. Others might argue he’s the only one with common sense in the ’Boro, particularly in this economic time.

Baker stepped down as the Eagles’ athletics director Friday, surprising some. But when your vision doesn’t quite see eye to eye with your boss’s vision (in this case, FBS supporter and university president Dr. Brooks Keel), we all know who’s going to win that battle of will.

So it shouldn’t have been a surprise either Baker didn’t want to be part of a big mistake, or he wasn’t asked to contribute to the future.